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Apple Briefly Bans App Over Jewish Joke

A pretty funny one, too!

by
Marc Tracy
July 12, 2010

Here’s a fun story we got wind of. Apple, which is notorious for banning applications from its iPhone store for arbitrary (or worse) reasons, initially barred a joke-telling application called “The Comic Fortune Cookie.” According to Rick Cipes, proprietor of Outrageous App, Apple singled out one joke, a particularly Jewish one, for constituting “objectionable content.” “I fired off a rant, with a lot of explanation points, basically saying how this joke has been in circulation for 50 years,” Cipes e-mails, “and I am former journalist who is going to stop at nothing and make their lives miserable until they reversed their decision, blah, blah.” Anyway, all’s well that ends well: You can download the app, for free, onto your iPhone or compatible iPod.

Wait, what’s that? You want to hear the joke itself? The old Henny Youngman favorite is after the jump.

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.